Ruminations
by RocksCanFly
Summary: A lot of things came from Kaldur, Artemis, and Dick's deception. Here are some of them. (A/N)- Chapter 2 re-posted
1. Artemis

It wasn't her fault

It wasn't her fault

Just try-

Try to remember it wasn't her fault.

(You really, really should have told her. Whose idea was it, you try to remember, to keep this kind of thing secret from the alien mind reader who'd already put more than one person into a fucking coma?)

_[How could any of you have ever guessed she'd do it to __**Kaldur**__]_

_{How many of you even know who the others __**are **__anymore}_

It wasn't her fault, you tell yourself as you sit at his bedside.

And its true- it wasn't. Well, it wasn't all hers.

But- its hard, to remember that, to not be a little bit angry under all the heartbroken guilt and sick worry. Because he's just- _lying there_. Eyes open, face slack, almost like he could be-

Not dead. His chest is rising, the beeping monitor hooked up to his wrist is keeping you informed that his pulse is just fine for an Atlantean, thank-you. It's not even the closest you've seen him to dead. You're reminded, sickeningly, of Bialya, of the desert, of him heat-mad and delusional, muttering to himself in desperate Atlantean until his body had been too tired and dried out to even allow him that.

You're reminded of all the other times you've almost lost him to the dark, and you're punched in the gut with how much worse this is.

Because even at his worst moments, clinging to life by a thread or by nothing but that insane willpower he seems to get from _somewhere_, he was still, well, _Kaldur_. Determination in the arch of his brow, strength in his jaw, in the grit of his teeth against the latest painful cost of being a hero.

But lying in this bed- It's like looking at doll of your friend, like the creepy dolls your sister once kept around because she knew they freaked you out (the ones you threw away, part in triumph and part in anger but mostly in the desperate stupid hope that maybe wrecking her stuff would bring her back, if only to yell at you, which wasn't important because at least she'd be _back_).

His face is slack and somehow pallid, the deep brown of it tinged green and washed of its color. Manta hasn't left his hair to grow, but as much as you know you should- to strengthen your cover, his belief that you and Kaldur are something much closer than mere partners or even friends- you can't bring yourself to offer to wield the razor. You can hardly bring yourself to look at him most of the time and, not for the first time, you're grateful for curtain of your hair. You can angle you head towards him, just enough that to an observer it'll seem like you're looking at him-brooding over his fate and the revenge you want on the witch who did such a thing to your lover- when really all you're staring at is the wall beyond his head.

That his eyes stayed open may be the worst part. The lid that is capable of dropping down to shield them stays up, thankfully. You love your Atlantean friends, but certain features of their anatomy have always freaked you out.

But even without the cloudy lens, his eyes haunt you. He doesn't even look angry- he rarely does outside of a fight, even when he should- just… Pained.

Guilty.

(_It's almost absurd, how guilty he can feel over things he has no control over, over things that aren't his fault [things like M'gann destroying his mind, like how terrible she must feel over all of this]. You'd deride him for playing the martyr if you didn't know that he honestly believed himself responsible for so many of the ridiculous things he flagellates himself over_)

It wasn't her fault, you remind yourself again. But under that, there's- the echo, of you and her and words you never thought you'd hear from her in a situation you somehow (stupidly, foolishly, because honestly who _couldn't_ have seen this coming, when you'd taken her little brother and her boyfriend and arranged for them to be rescued from the same ship where the man who she blamed for their torture and your death was just walking _**around-**_) never thought you'd be in.

_I thought he deserved-_

_Deserved_

_**DESERVED**_

_M'gann, what have you done- _and you hadn't just meant Kaldur, though a lot of you, admittedly, meant just Kaldur. But you haven't been around, and you've heard stories, and you were admittedly, yeah, a little worried sometimes by the things that you heard, but this was _M'gann_, and she was so nice, such a good person, and she _loved_ Kaldur, he was an older brother to her for chrissakes, and she'd _never_-

And then she _did_, and now he's lying here in front of you like an abandoned shell. His eyes are empty except for that stupid guilty looking sadness the drives you insane, and he's been still and quiet for so long, and you _love_ her and you know it wasn't her fault _but_-

You can't help but be angry, for the things she's done, for Kaldur.

For the person she became when you were gone. Because you love M'gann and you know M'gann and M'gann would never-

Except she _did._ She did, and you don't know how you can ever face her if Kaldur doesn't come back.

So, yeah. You're angry, furious, but you're also heartbroken because Kaldur might be gone and M'gann-

M'gann maybe has been, for a while, and you never noticed it until you found her kneeling across from his corpse body him with horror dawning in her eyes.

Kaldur may be the one lying comatose in front of you, but you're past beginning to suspect he's not the only one who needs to be brought back to himself.


	2. Conner

(A/N)- Sorry about the mix-up with the weird html crap yesterday. I went back and fixed the error. Here's the real chapter

* * *

He's the man who was your mentor before anyone else tried to be.

He taught you. You encouraged you.

He helped you break out, not just out of CADMUS but out of the idea that you don't even own your own thoughts- He mediated between you and the rest of the Team in the early days, when things were too much to handle and you were hardly wrapping your head around "me" and "I" and were nowhere _near_ ready for "we".

He was someone to look up to. And not just for you. He was that person for all of you.

And you can't remember if you thanked him.

(_yes. yes you can.)_

Who are you kidding, yourself? Not likely. You know you never thanked him- and it wasn't personal, not like you felt ungrateful or you don't think he deserved it- you _just_- you're not used to thanking people. It's not exactly the kind of thing they worried about when they were force-feeding you info.

Superman doesn't need to thank people. He's the guy doing the saving- so what good is gratitude?

(_especially if you already have obedience_)

You've gotten better, with people. Except Kaldur was never really- okay, you can't say he's not a person. You're not Luthor. But he wasn't _people. _

He just, well- _was._

Since the day they woke you up he's been the one who's always been there- quietly supporting you and forcing you to think for yourself. Other people did that too, eventually. But he did it first.

He wasn't just the first person to_ believe_ you could think for yourself- he **_expected_**you to.

And you think that you made that man (_boy- he was only 16, how do you always forget he was only __**16**_) into the father that Clark refused to be. Consciously or not, you made Kaldur into something like a father for yourself.

And when you look back on it, you treated him like a lot of teenagers treat their fathers (if M'gann's sitcoms are to be believed, at least). You got mad at him when he tried to restrict you, when he tried to hide things from you, tried to make you listen- Even when he was just trying to help. Even when he really _was _doing just that- helping.

You guess you never thanked him because it never felt like he was doing anything _new_. No one notices constants, right? Only- change.

(_but you're noticing him now, and there's __**change**__ all right. and you __**hate**__ it and you hate __**him**__ and you hate __**yourself **__because maybe this has been coming and you just never saw it_)

(_none of you did. none of you __**could **__have)_

_(__liar_)

You never thanked him, and you don't think anyone else did either. Five years of leadership that even you could see he didn't really want, and the thanks he got tended to be the kind of thanks parents usually get from kids. Back handed or silent or the assumption that he knows you're grateful.

Except he wasn't an adult, as mature as he acted. He was still a kid, too- impulsive and emotional as the rest of you. The very fact that he was in CADMUS at all that night proves it. But he was a good actor, and you all bought it and treated him like he should know better even when none of you did.

(_and in this moment you remember Bialya, and the fire, and the mission in India. and you wonder at how all of you treated him like he was indestructible, in every way, and how it took him shattering to see that he wasn't_)

And then he was gone, and you've been told Tula and His Father, and The Lies and He Snapped.

Yeah. He snapped alright. He's gone off the deep end in more ways than one because he had to have- otherwise he'd never be doing this, never would have done the things you've heard of in whispered conversations that the Leaguers forgot you could hear.

Kaldur'ahm of Shayeris would _never_- not in his right mind. He _snapped._ He had to have.

(_because there's no way, no way Kaldur, of __**all**__ people-)_

But you're not sure it was Tula, or just her, or just His Dad or The Lies or even all three.

You wonder if there's been pressure building there, unnoticed and unaccounted for because it's always been there and because it's Aqualad and of all people who would expect it from _Aqualad_?

You try to recall whether the angle of the slope of his shoulders had increased over time, whether the lines at the corner of his mouth that came too early were from laughter or from frowns.

(_you know the answer. Kaldur never laughed much, and his smiles were too rare and too gentle and too half-there and too sad to ever be the kind to cause lines_)

So you're angry and you're furious and still half-disbelieving even with him right there in front of you, dressed like the terrorist he's calling father.

But you're not just angry at him.

That wouldn't be fair.

You're angry at Orin for lying, you're angry at Ocean Master for taking Tula away from all of you, you're angry at Dick for being right and at La'gann for calling Kaldur a traitor even when he is because Kaldur and traitor don't sit well together in your head.

You're angry at yourself, because you never said thank-you, and now you _can't_.

Because whoever this guy wearing Kaldur's face is, using his voice and his water bearers and all the anger your friend never had (_never showed_)-

It's not Kaldur, because Kaldur would _never_.

(**_except maybe he would, and you never noticed, and you don't know which part of that you hate the most_**)


	3. Kaldur'ahm

There are places in your life you never in a million years imagined you would end up, and every one of them has come upon you in the last year or so.

If you'd been asked ten months back to betray your country, your king, your friends-

You would have slit your throat in seconds rather than face the label of traitor.

_Service, Bravery, and Honor_, they once told you as they needled the tattoos into your shoulders, into the smaller planes of your arms.

_But above all of these, Honor_.

You could laugh at the thought of _honor_ now. It's a luxury and a concept meant for a world where children are not stolen from their beds by aliens that smile at the surface while they plot to bring all 7 billion of the people to whom you have sworn yourself to ruin.

Honor lies bleeding in the rubble of the hospitals and embassies you have destroyed in the name of deceit and espionage. It is left rotting in the same grave as the Atlantean soldiers and dignitaries whose lives you have ransomed for Earth's freedom.

Honor is fallen, and you are that rancid, leftover husk of a thing you have always sworn to never be.

If you did not fear the risk of discovery that such an action would bring, you would burn Ἐφιάλτης, the name of the great traitor, into the flesh above your heart. As it is you find yourself idly tracing the letters onto your palms, onto the table where you and your father plan the destruction of your kingdom.

There are a thousand tales in Atlantean mythology of The Fall. A great hero, brought low by tragedy or bloated by hubris, turns to darkness and wreaks havoc with hands that once saved. And every time that hero is brought down by an old companion- a friend, a lover, a sibling, a fellow soldier.

The message is always the same:

Come what may, no matter what honors and victories you gather to yourself, you are fallible and if you fail in your duties you will receive no mercy.

So it's a lesson out of a story teller's mouth when she steps before you, calls Murderer down the hall of the hellish alien ship. Her anger sends the word ringing through the metal of the ship and into the hollow of your heart and reverberating through the tenuous strings that hold you still to your mind. You are already half mad with grief and guilt, the kind of madness that sits quietly and awaits your sleep to plague you.

An avenging angel stands before you with hair red as that of the man whose soul you have abandoned to the dark and skin as green as the soft seaweed that ate up the body of the only woman you have ever loved. Her eyes are as bright as Atlantean magic or holy light, and you are almost grateful when she brings you to your knees.

This is how the story goes, the traitor brought to heel by the hands of the betrayed.

This is how the story goes, and you will have your ending.

You only hope she can forgive you your use of her when she has finished.

_[No man is justified in doing evil on the ground of __expediency]_


End file.
